Sculpture

Maryland’s Glenstone with Charles Ray: An Ongoing Series of Rotating Exhibitions

Charles Ray is known for his uncanny realistic sculptures of cars, plants, and humans. He has been making art for nearly five decades. He was born in Chicago and moved to L.A. in 1981 where he continues to reside. Ray has had a flourishing international career; exhibiting his work in numerous prestigious venues as three Venice Biennales, Kunst Museum Basel, five Whitney Biennials, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago and Documenta to mention only a few. Although he is known for such iconic figurative works as the Family Romance, 1993; Boy with Frog, 2009 and his experimental statues. Ray’s work does not lend itself to specific categorization since it is ever evolving and rooted in the time and place of its conception

Denver’s Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities with ‘Text in Art’

Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Ed Ruscha, and Christopher Wool are just a few of the most renowned artists who have very successfully used words as key elements in their art. After all, visual art is a form of communication, and the addition or focus on text in the creative process can be a very powerful tool. Currently, the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in Arvada, Colorado is presenting two excellent exhibitions curated by Emily Grace King and Collin Parson that focus on a number of contemporary artists who too address the import and range of text in art.

Massachusetts’ Peabody Essex Museum with Three Diverse Exhibitions

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem Massachusetts is a jewel in the crown of cultural institutions on the East Coast. It is one of the oldest museums in the United States and is only a 30-minute drive from Boston. Not only are its objects exquisite and the architecture magnificent and but also the PEM offers visitors a diverse collection ranging from the 18th century to today including: paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, textiles, architecture and decorative objects. Its superb collections of African, American, Asian, Maritime, Korean, Japanese, Native American and Oceanic art provides visitors with insights into cultural diversity across time. It continuously assembles changing thematic exhibitions and displays of work by individual artists.

D.C’s Hillwood Estate with ‘A Garden of Dancing Delights’

This summer, Washington, D.C.’s Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens has opened “Rich Soil,” an exhibition of life-size wire sculptures installed all over the estate’s 13 acres of formal gardens. The cavorting wire sculptures should feel right at home. Hillwood was the home of General Foods CEO Marjorie Merriweather Post, who had a lifelong love of dance. Her party guests–always notable and famous–were often expected to partake in after-dinner square-dancing. But she was also a serious dance patron of the American Ballet Theater and the Washington Ballet. So, Hillwood hosting “Rich Soil” seems a highly-appropriate partnership for the dancing wire sculptures.

Artist, Julia Arriola, in Conversation with Elaine A. King

Julia Arriola is an artist living in Tucson, Arizona. Her art is interdisciplinary and she works across materials. Underlying much of her work is a unique perspective of Native Americans symbolism, social awareness as well as an intertwined interest in the mechanical age that comprised the late 19th century. This conversation took place from September 22-28, 2020. After the first introductory exchange Elaine A King will be EAK and Julia Arriola will be JA.

D.C.’s Phillips Collection with “Riffs and Relations: Af-Am Artists & European Modernism”

The Phillips Collection along with Dr. Adrienne L. Childs, an independent scholar, art historian and curator, organized the exhibition “Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition”. It presents 72 works by 53 artists, leaning heavily on contemporary work juxtaposed with distinguished early 20th century European Modernists such as George Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and noteworthy African-Americans as Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence and Alma Thomas.

Washington’s National Gallery Showcases ‘Degas at the Opera’

For today’s audiences entranced by cell phone entertainments, the idea of going to a grand communal event is a rarity if not a total unknown. But there was a time when entertainment aimed at conveying a larger national character. For nineteenth century France, the Paris Opera declaimed itself the grandest of the grand—it was the nation’s cultural and social center, and people dressed in high foppery to showcase the importance of being French. It was all about unabashed spectacle.

Toronto’s New, Sleepover Gallery: An Interview with Founder, Apollonia Vanova

Emese Krunák-Hajagos (EKH): As you’ve said, Darren Gallery is reopening with a new concept, Sleepover Art Gallery, after a long and painful renovation. Where did this idea come from?

?A Stunning Exhibition (and Quagmire) at The Mattress Factory,“Factory Installed 2019”

The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh is internationally acclaimed for showcasing some of the most innovative and divergent selections of installation art in the United States. Its co-founders, the late Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk, very early recognized the importance of Installation art that celebrates a shift in focus from object-hood and what art visually represents to what site-specific work could communicate about a place while providing unique experiences for viewers. Since 1977, this institution has given over 600 artists the opportunity to experiment, take risks, and explore the creative process while engaging with the community through its residency program.

Philanthropy Today: Murky Waters, Quirky Consequences, and the Joys of Public Art

Philanthropists may fancy themselves the Medici of today’s art world. Demanding or endearing, they control the money that shapes public access to contemporary art and culture. The Sackler family has earned the consequences of outraged headlines, with the Louvre the latest museum to scrub “Sackler” from its walls. Other major museums like the Met, the Guggenheim, and the Tate have stopped accepting Sackler money.